SOMERSET — Two school officials said they would not seek elected seats on the school board, bringing to four the number of longtime office-holders bowing out of the May 12 Town Election.

Both Elizabeth White and Jamison Souza said they would not seek re-election. White is a member of the Somerset Berkley Regional School Committee and has been a school committee member for 12 years, and Souza has been on the Somerset School Committee for nearly four years after spending eight years on the Planning Board.

Souza was not elected last year to the School Committee after one elected term. However, after tying for a Somerset School Committee elected seat with Melissa Terra, Souza gained his current post on a joint appointment by that committee and the Board of Selectmen.

Souza said he wants to spend more time with his 3-year-old daughter. “I’m not running for any elected position at this moment,” he said.

“It was a really hard decision for me,” said White, an educator who has three sons. With a new school opening, it’s “nice to get some fresh people on there,” she said.

Somerset School Committee member Donald Rebello, serving in his ninth year, has already announced that he will not seek a fourth term.

Some replacements are emerging during a year in which voters will see new faces on both school boards and the Board of Selectmen. Patrick O’Neil, a 12-year selectman, also is not running for re-election.

Four challengers are lined up for the three-year selectmen’s seat. Two returned papers: Steve Moniz, a former selectman, of 84 New Hampshire Ave.; and Stephen Mello of 449 High St. Jeff Thompson of 170 North St. and Timothy Lewis of 1152 Prospect St. took out papers during the past week.

Terra, of 102 Banville Ave., who came close winning office, took out nomination papers Monday for one of two School Committee seats. Incumbent Robert Camara, the board chairman, also took out papers for re-election. Neither has returned them. School Committee members are elected to three-year terms.

For the two-year unexpired school seat Souza currently holds, Cheryl Crossley-Simmons of 570 Main St., took out nomination papers on Friday. Her experience includes two three-year terms, from 1992-98, representing Somerset on the Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School Committee.

Perhaps the biggest news of the past few days was that Victor Machado, in his eighth year on the Somerset School Committee, took out papers Monday and returned them Tuesday to also serve on the Somerset Berkley Regional School Committee.

That’s the three-year seat White is opting not to run for. James Moore of 107 Manchester Ave. took out papers for that office on Feb. 21 and has not returned them.

“I’m definitely running and will be on both” committees if elected to the regional board, Machado said.

In describing his reason for seeking to become the first school official elected to serve on both boards, Machado said: “If Somerset has officials elected to both boards, they have a responsibility to do what’s right for both boards.”

If elected, Machado said, he’d be the fourth person on the regional board to serve on the separate school boards for Somerset and Berkley.

Those four — two appointed from Somerset, one from Berkley and himself as an elected member — would constitute a majority of the seven-member regional board.

He said he would not accept either the $3,500 stipend for Somerset School Committee or the $1,500 for the regional board.

The outspoken Machado did not mask his feelings that change should happen.

“I think the region needs new leadership and a new direction in the chairmanship,” he said. Richard Peirce is the regional board chairman.

Machado said that circumstances during the past month, after a joint meeting of the committees, influenced his unorthodox decision to run for the second committee. The regional board and the Somerset board have continued the controversial short-term practice of not sharing a superintendent as stipulated.

“The idea of not sharing an administration together and instead (each district) going its own way should irritate every member of the community,” Machado said.

In general, he said, the members of both boards don't know what's been going on, and Machado claimed “the information coming between both committees is not the truth.”

He said information is being shared between the chairs of the two committees, Peirce and Camara, without votes on potential actions.

As one example, Machado said recent comments by Peirce that a proposal from executive committee discussions was for the Somerset and Somerset Berkley districts to hire an assistant superintendent focused upon the K-8 schools.

At Monday night’s SBR School Committee meeting, Peirce corrected the Feb. 19 open session minutes to state there was a proposal with Camara to begin a joint search for an assistant superintendent who would focus upon the K-8 district the first year.

In a Herald News interview on Friday, Peirce said he believed the regional district had made “a serious effort to permit us to share a superintendent with the K-8 district.” He said that involved a proposed assistant superintendent under Thomas Lynch. He said the concept was the assistant superintendent would take over the two districts the second year and Lynch would return to solely being Berkley’s superintendent.

“I feel we did everything we could to work with them,” Peirce said.

Machado’s point was that information and the response from executive session discussions of the Somerset School Committee was not conveyed to all committee members of the two boards.

In another election race, incumbent Town Moderator Lucia Casey, who returned nomination papers early on, could face challenges from former Selectman Lorne Lawless of 607 North St. and William Brownell of 1345 Vine St. Both took out papers last week and have not returned them for the three-year seat.

Candidates have until March 20 to take out papers and March 24 to return them to the town clerk’s office.